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A Good Beef Gravy

A gravy made from lean beef simmered with onion, salt, pepper, and mushroom ketchup, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Good Beef Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and place it in a stewpan with the cold water.

  2. Add the onion, salt, and pepper, then simmer gently for three hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Before serving, mix the arrowroot with a little cold water and stir it into the gravy.

  2. Add the Harvey's sauce and allow it to come to a boil.

  3. Strain into a tureen and serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Gives the gravy its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the gravy and gives it a glossy, smooth texture.
Mushroom ketchup or harvey's sauce
Adds savoury depth and a rich, umami-like flavour to the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and background flavour as it slowly simmers.

The step that matters

Stirring in the arrowroot. Arrowroot must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into the hot gravy, or it clumps. Its starch thickens as it heats, giving body and a glossy finish. Boiling it for too long can thin it again, so the gravy should be finished promptly.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, pepper, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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